Gostiny Dvor or mall is one of the classic malls, traditional for the Russian provinces, built on Ufa's Verkhnetorgovaya Square in the early 19th century. In 1999, it was completely rebuilt (remake) under the trade and business complex. In 2014-2015, a second reconstruction took place.
Gostiny Dvor in Ufa was needed when the provincial government passed
from Orenburg to Ufa in 1802 and the city needed a master plan. In
1812-1815, correspondence was conducted between St. Petersburg, Orenburg
and Ufa, where Gostiny Dvor met.
Since 1825, the construction of
the stone Gostiny Dvor began in the center of the square according to
the project of the St. Petersburg professor of architecture A. I.
Melnikov. The building in the style of classicism acquired its final
appearance only after 40 years. In 1864, the "Journal of the presence of
the Ufa provincial government" reported that most of the building was
already ready, and the rest should be ready by 1866.
The
grandiose yellow building with white bas-reliefs was framed on four
sides by light open galleries with arched openings, and in the middle
there was an open space that allowed trading both outside and inside.
Soon Gostiny Dvor was already considered a privileged place among the
local merchants. The richest of them were given a place for the
construction of private trading houses. Some have survived to this day:
the trading house of the merchant D. P. Bershtein (a three-story office
building from Kommunisticheskaya Street);
trading house of Ivanov and
Nobel and the building of the Mutual Lending Society (two two-story
buildings on Verkhnetorgovaya Square);
trading house of the
Krestovnikov brothers (a two-story house on Lenina Street, which is now
occupied by McDonald's).
In 1941, the Serpukhov weaving and
Yartsevskaya spinning mills were evacuated to Ufa. The Gostiny Dvor
building was occupied by the Ufa Cotton Mill until the early 1980s.
It has been abandoned since the 1980s. In the 1990s, ruins remained
in its place. In 1995, the DDT group and Yuri Shevchuk filmed a video
for their song "Dead City" in the ruins. After bringing the building to
a critical state, the city administration decided to demolish it, but
the public rose to defend Gostiny Dvor.
The beginning of the
reconstruction was laid by the decree of the President of the Republic
of Bashkortostan "On measures to ensure the acceleration of the
reconstruction of the building of the former Trade Rows in the city of
Ufa" dated August 11, 1995.
On October 11, 1999, the completely
rebuilt Gostiny Dvor, designed by Ufa architects headed by S. A.
Goldobin, opened and began to function as a commercial, business, and
cultural center not only for Ufa, but for the entire Republic. Only one
corner of the historic building remains. Occupying an area of 40
thousand m², it houses more than 150 shopping and entertainment
establishments. The fountain at Gostiny Dvor, opened in 1998 and
representing a cascade of granite bowls, was considered one of the
largest in Ufa (180 m²). However, it was demolished in 2015 during the
reconstruction of Upper Trading Square.
June 2, 2014 closed for
renovation. On December 5, 2015, Gostiny Dvor was opened after
reconstruction.